"Dried Shit is Buddha" -- A Short Pre-FBI Raid Interview with DSZ

(Note: I posted this short interview on my blog the day before an FBI ninja predawn "tactical" raid on my home -- that is, I posted it sometime during the day of February 14, 2011. "O my prophetic soul!" No doubt it shows what a menace I am to polite society. Interestingly, it was the only time I had ever directly mentioned the evil cult leading psychopath Alyce Zeoli aka "Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo" on my Web page. Less than 12 hours after this short interview went up, I was staring down FBI gun sights, and agents were questioning me about whether or not I wished any "harm" to the psycho lady. Quite the contrary, I said. I only hope she and all her sinister cultist fellow-stalkers get to experience this! Just the other day I recovered my laptop from the local FBI HQ. This was on it. So I am re-posting it for the pleasure of all my friends.Namaste!)

Q. I've been following your Twitter aphorisms and blogs for a long time.

A. Thank you.

Q. You're welcome. Sometimes I find them really exciting. Sometimes they "blow my mind." Though at the beginning, when I first started reading you, I confess I was worried that you were another nefarious Guru type trying to mind fuck me. There were days when if you'd asked for my money, I'd have given you all of it on the spot.

A. I'm not that Guru type, and I don't care about money. People offer me their houses, their skulls, I don't take them. I don't take anything; I just give.

Q. Oh, I know that now.

A. Good. Pessoa said, "Money is beautiful, because it buys freedom." But the less of it I have, usually the better I feel. Weird, huh?

Q. Yes. And now I have a few small questions for you.

A. Shoot.

Q. You've been posting less often lately. There was a time when you seemed to be all over Twitter. But you've gone pretty quiet. Why?

A. I write. I do other things too. I play a bamboo flute. I sit facing a wall. Sometimes I do more of one or more of another. There's no thinking process behind it. "The spring breeze plays with white clouds." "The bamboo stalk doesn't remember being struck by a pebble."

Q. A strange sort of paranoid blog I've read called "Protecting Nyingma" has made the persistent claim that you're a man named Tenpa Rinpoche, aka William Cassidy. Would you care to comment?

A. Yes. I'm not him.

Q. What explains the extreme claims made about you by a Tulku named Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo and her students online?

A. Don't know. We didn't hit it off? I sent her a poem when her students first began pestering me on Twitter. Possibly she didn't like the poem.

Q. A poem? How did it go?

A. "The golden rooster sings a soundless song/but it lays a diamond egg:/Doodle-doodle-doo!"

Q. What does it mean?

A. It was inspired by Bodhidharma, who is said to have cut off his own eyelids when he started to fall asleep. Most of us fall asleep a hundred times a second. So it's a poem about the joy of waking up, or of Satori. If you can not fall asleep for even two seconds, that's kensho.

Q. Did you have Satori?

A. I refer to it as Kensho. Some say it's the same. Some say Kensho is a lesser Satori. Yes. I wouldn't presume to speak of Zen as I do if I hadn't directly seen the self-nature, the awesome sky-going dragon nature of Zen.

Q. Doesn't getting Satori put you on the same level as Buddha?

A. No.

Q. No?

A. Does a dog have Buddha-nature?

Q. [Silence.]

A. Master Ikkyu Sojun wrote, "The autumn wind at night is a thousand years." In Zen we use dhyana and koans to stop the thinking process and the emotional grasping and clutching at phenomenal straws that goes hand in hand with it. That's why waking up is hard to do, and when it happens it's sudden as a lightning flash, if you can imagine a lightning flash as big as the universe that leaves you laughing like a moron. [Shouts.]

Q. Hah! You made me jump out of my seat. I'm drenched in cold sweat! This is Zen? It's both upsetting and refreshing! I can't decide if I've had a nightmare, or if you've just crowned me with flowers! For just an instant, my mind was so clear I felt I could have talked with the pine trees outside!

A. Sit down, face a wall, lower your eyelids to half mast, focus on your breathing to clear your head, and all the Buddhas will come to you with lightning bolts in their hands. Manjusri will wash your face in cold water. After that, you may entertain as many "thoughts" as you like, but they won't be able to hold you.

Q. Is that why you call yourself a Roshi, or a Rishi, because you can induce this kind of experience you just gave me by shouting all of the sudden?

A. No. The "Roshi" or "Rishi" I put after "Dried Shit Zen" -- it's not about "me personally," it only means that dried shit is Buddha. The clear universe unclouded and unbewildered by thinking-discriminating mind is the Great Roshi, the Absolute Infinite Being. All the Zen Masters said as much. You can even find statements like that in Sutras. But they have to be experienced to be believed. Maybe even then you won't believe it. But talk in some "knowing" familiar way about Buddha and you'd better run to the bathroom and scrub your mouth out with harsh tasting soap. I'm shocked by how many people call themselves Roshis and put on robes and get up on a dais and have themselves videotaped saying: "Buddha this, Buddha that." They're worse than a lice infestation. Listen joyously to the cold wind at night, play with the white clouds during the day -- that's my advice. Be a sky-going dragon. Arouse energy by doing Ki breathing and Haragei, and use that energy to break through to direct realization. Gurus such as Jetsunma probably don't like me because they're afraid I'll destroy their business. Enlightenment isn't anybody's business, it's everybody's need. We're human so we can laugh and play and be born into the infinite.

AUM SWASTI!

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This is a little book of concise instructions for entering the non-dual state and experiencing the miraculous nature of life. It is a complete system for realizing the goal of Zen, for "entering the Gateless Gate." You can throw away all your other books on Enlightenment. Either this one works, or nothing will. “Put strength into it; abandon conceit.’ Just practice truly, with energy and resolve.

"At the Gateless Barrier"

At the Gateless Barrier, I play the old tunes on my bamboo flute./It's cold at night and everybody weeps to hear the ancient songs./Yet Zen is without sentiment.

I write. I do Zen. I play the bamboo flute.

"Great Nature, Great Manifestation, Great Realization." What does this mean? Every aspect of this life, which is Zen Enlightenment itself, is "great." Whether wonderful or terrifying or both it always "is" in a way that cannot be explained. Just try to explain it. Can you, or can't you?

It's just like when Master Ko Bong shouted "That's it! Ha, ha, ha, ha!" and broke his fan. Do you get it, or not? If you can tell me what you get, I'll bow to you. If you can't, I'll call you my Master. Either way, you win.

For more notes, poems and aphorisms: go here.See also 老虎: Lao Hu. Contact me at jyakunen(at)gmail.com.

SHIBUMI TEA ROOM

I've begun building a small tea room in the old style. Here, I plan to conduct the simplest and most ancient form of the Zen tea ceremony.

"Cool in summer, warm in winter; flowers from the field; prepare for rain; enjoy a sip of tea together."

This will be good place to sit and drink tea and listen to rain clattering on the roof. "After all there is no difficulty in tea, only enjoyment." (Kaji Aso)

Talk to the Moktak

There is nothing in the world bigger than the tip of an autumn hair, and Mount T'ai is little. No one has lived longer than a dead child, and P'eng-tsu died young. Heaven and earth were born at the same time I was, and the ten thousand things are one with me.-Master Chuang-Tzu